07 January 2009

For Christmas, one of my son's teachers gave each of his students a note with a bit of candy. This particular teacher is male and is quite strict, and is probably my son's least favorite teacher. My son feels he is terrible at the subject and resists going to that class. What I immediately noticed about the note he sent home with my son though is that it was written in cursive, which most second graders cannot read. My son didn't even know what the note was about.

Now take another teacher. My son loves this woman teacher. Yesterday she sent home a note thanking him for the cookies he brought her for Christmas. The note was very simple words and written very clearly, obviously meant for the boy to read. It said in large writing "you're the best". This meant so much to my son, that he held the card all evening.

He woke up this morning wanting to go to school because of this teacher. To this teacher, I say: You are the best...

2 comments:

Archer01
said...

I agree! My daughter struggles with school everyday and we worry all the time about her passing or failing classes. She is in 7th grade now and I am finding more & more that subjects become much more dificult to her when she has teachers that don't motivate her or engage her. And on the flip side, she has had teachers that have made her toughest subjects actually enjoyable. Hats off to the teachers that can motivate a diffcult child like mine!

Besides parents, I would say teachers were the strongest adult influence on me as a kid. The better or more engaging the teacher, the more I wanted to learn. An interesting article in Time I think on the Super. of Washington DC Public Schools and how a big focus of her's is getting rid of "bad" teachers.